Musings of the Mad
by Shaddyr
Summary: Disclaimer: Not mine or the boys would be otherwise occupied...Summary: I think Rodney keeps a journal since he'll be famous one day, it behooves him to record his private thoughts for posterity. I wondered what he might say about Atlantis.
1. We're Not Dead Yet

Personal Journal  
Dr. M. Rodney McKay  
CSO Atlantis Expedition 

_First entry, City of Atlantis_

I'm amazed that we're not dead yet. This is due mostly to my brilliance, of course. And I'm sure it won't last.

We made some 'friends' - met some traders who call themselves Athosians. Their leader is majorly hot. I love blonde, and I think I am still a little bit obsessed with Sam Carter, but Teyla Emmagan could give her a run for her money. She is a little bit scary though. I get the feeling that she is quite able to snap one of the marines in two if they so much as looked at her the wrong way.

Major Sheppard managed to wake up the sleeping scourge of this galaxy - life sucking energy vampires no less! And assume the military leadership role after performing a mercy killing on Colonel Sumner. The marines are grumbling, but no one is bucking his command so far. Sheppard is obviously not comfortable with being in a position of authority. With his crazy hair and boyish flirty smile, he looks more like the kind of guy who should be waxing a surfboard on a beach somewhere. Possibly with Teyla stretched out on a beach towel beside him in a really skimpy string bikini…

There is next to no power. The ZPM is almost drained. We barely managed to not die horribly by drowning. Unfortunately, the city is now floating, completely exposed, on the Atlanean ocean, a sitting duck for any Wraith cruiser that happens by.

We are all going to die here. Soon. Likely in a hideously painful and humiliating manner. I will never get my Nobel. All the brilliant contributions that I was destined to make for the betterment of mankind will die with me here in this godforsaken galaxy as some snagletoothed monster sucks my life out and discards my withered corpse like yesterday's garbage.

I am far too sober to contemplate how pathetic our statistical chances for survival are. Rumour has it Zelenka had a still assembled within 12 hours of a successful trading foray that brought back several hundred pounds of potato like tubers in trade for some minor technical assistance with some villager's irrigation system.

_Addendum to prevous entry:_

Zlinka makes rea;ly dman good hooch, I'll give himm that. I don't evne care that were all gonna die horribly. Least right now. And also, SHeppard has real;y stupid hair.

I'm drunk. That's funny. Seriously. REal;y stupid hair. Ha!


	2. The Thin Line

Personal Journal  
Dr. M. Rodney McKay  
CSO Atlantis Expedition

_Second entry, City of Atlantis_

They say that the line between genius and insanity is a thin one. I beg to differ. It's not a line, it's a tightrope. Over Niagara fucking falls. And I'm on it. On a unicycle. Blindfolded.

I spend my days surrounded by morons and imbeciles who threaten to knock me off it. What worries me is the possibility that they already have and I was too busy screaming about the idiocy I'm immersed in to notice.

I heard Kavanaugh and Stoltz complaining that I am arrogant, egotistical and condescending. Well, yes I am. It's difficult being the most brilliant man in two galaxies, and those morons have no idea how taxing it is to slow down and spell everything out for them. There is so much we must get done just to keep the city functioning, never mind the siren song I can feel pulling me to the vast storehouse of information that is just sitting there waiting for us, for when we finally have enough time to spare from scrambling to simply stay alive to explore it - and I am forced to slow down, to spoon feed the ground breaking, earth-shattering, mind boggling changes we are discovering about everything we ever believed to be true regarding the nature of the universe to some resentful, jealous so-called peers... well. That makes me a little cranky as Major Sheppard would say.

It is fact that I am more intelligent than any three people on Atlantis combined. I am able to make intuitive leaps of logic and reasoning that simply escape anyone else on my staff, though Zelenka comes close. And I will never tell him that or the man will become insufferable. Thankfully, most of them do get it the first time I explain, but the ones who don't - this is not what I signed up for. I am not here to hand hold the slow and challenged and listen to them whine because they are not as quick on the uptake as they need to be. And by god, they need to be, every single ONE OF THEM NEED TO BE, because what we are learning and how fast we are able to integrate it with what we already know may be what saves all of our asses in the end.

They think that I take them to task because I enjoy humiliating them - and they have the nerve to call me arrogant! They just don't seem to understand that I don't CARE how they FEEL, it's so fucking irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is our very survival! They have got to be the smartest and the fastest and the best. We are the mental marines, and we have to figure this ancient science out, ingest in, internalize, become one with it and make it our own, before this goddamn galaxy kills us all.

I am very tired. Tired of Pegasus throwing us an unending series of curve balls, and tired of stupid petty colleagues who shouldn't have been granted a high school diploma much less a doctorate.

I don't think that I am asking for too much – I want fresh coffee at 2am, (and I will take the local caffeinated equivalent we found on PX5 744, but it's just not the same) instant obedience from every one of my staff, a bottomless supply of power bars – and tacit acknowledgment that when I say Project A takes priority over Project B, I'm not just dicking them all around because I am a petty, power mongering dictator. I acknowledge that I am sometimes AM a petty, power mongering dictator, but not when it comes to the safety of this expedition. Our corporate survival here is one of my primary objectives. It's on par with my desire to put everything I learn from the Ancient Database into practical application, write the Grand Unifying Theory to Explain All Things, and take home my well deserved Nobel. That's as high as any priority can get for me.

I am feeling disturbingly maudlin. I need to go read Kavanaugh the riot act over the stupid stunt he pulled yesterday. He was cutting corners on routine maintenance of the Naquadah generators! He's lucky we don't shoot people for stupidity! Maybe I'll hunt down Sheppard and insult his intelligence for a while. One of these days he has got to fess up to the fact he's actually smarter than several of the mathematicians on my staff. Or I could do both. God knows I need some down time, and if I stare at the database any longer tonight, I think my very brilliant brain will explode and dribble out my ears.

Addendum to previous entry:

Ripped Kavanaugh a ne3w one. Tol Shepard he had stupid hair. AGain. Cuz sriossly, it is. Was robbed blind by Zlinka - gave im a half pound of coffee for that toxic swill he calls hooch! Somehow ran into SHeppard agin and then we drank it,. My liver will probly explode now, but I don't care cuz once agins I'm drunk. And is all funny. And oh my god, why is Sheppards hair so srupid?


	3. Hair of the Dog

Personal Journal  
Dr. M. Rodney McKay  
CSO Atlantis Expedition

_Third entry, City of Atlantis_

I'm amazed I'm not dead yet. The pain shrouding my every thought in a foggy residue is enough to make death a little more attractive than usual. I'm quite certain I'm suffering from alcohol poisoning. Or something worse - God only knows what's actually in that crap Zelenka calls moonshine.

Oh my god, my head is going to explode. I've had migraines that were more pleasant than this.

I really can't allow myself to become so inebriated again. What the hell would we do if I was three sheets to the wind and something went catastrophically wrong with the city? I'd be too screwed up to save us, and everyone would die horribly. All because I was taking a night off to get pie eyed and shoot the shit with Sheppard, just like a regular guy.

No pressure or anything.

I think I resent the fact that everyone, essentially, depends on me to keep this place running. I know I'm arrogant, but this isn't just arrogance on my part - it's really true. There just isn't anyone else here who has a deep enough grasp of a sufficient number of different city systems and subroutines to jump in and troubleshoot problems the way I can. Added to that, I now have the nifty ATA gene - though of course, not nearly as strong and sure as the Major's - which makes me virtually indispensable. I have come to realize it is madness that Sheppard and I are not only both on away teams, but on the SAME team no less. God help Atlantis if something were to happen to one of us - but if they lost us both, I don't think the expedition could make it.

And that thought reminds me, even through the pain caused by the evil gnome in my brain attacking the back of my eye socket with an ice pick, why it was I got the hooch from Zelenka in the first place. And now find myself considering whether hair of the dog really does work as advertised. Because I really don't want to think about all of this right now.

At the rate I'm going, we're going to need to open our very own chapter of AA here. It'll be the triple A.

Oh my god, I need coffee, an ice pack and a dark room. I may never drink again.

_Addendum to previous entry:_

I don't believe this! I'm truly astonished, and that rarely happens to me for anything less than exciting new Ancient technology. Those bastards are going to pay.

I don't know who did it, but I will find out and kill them in their sleep. No, I won't. I'll kill them while they're awake, painfully and slowly. That is if Sheppard doesn't find them first. I have a feeling no one will ever find the bodies if he does.

I would bet next week's pay it was the marines who took those pictures of us as we staggered down the hall last night. I vaguely remember that stupid lampshade - well, it looked like a lampshade, who the hell knows what the Ancients really used it for - but I can't imagine what possessed me to put it on my head. Or maybe I do. I sort of recall that perhaps I was trying to convince Sheppard to wear it. Probably to hide his stupid hair.

Now, the picture of him flat on his ass is pretty funny. I will be sure to save that one to my private directory before I purge every copy and every backup of every picture taken last night from the mainframe - and from every single computer in the network. Oh, they think they can run, they think they can hide, they think they can keep their files safe from me. They have no idea what I am capable of. There won't be one single shred of digital photographic evidence by the time I am through, and then I'll search and destroy the perpetrator. Someone is going to fry for this, I'll see to it personally.

Just as soon as the jackhammer in my brain takes a break.


End file.
